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Managerial job changing is becoming an increasingly important issue in managerial careers. Due to reasons such as global competition, mergers, acquisitions, corporate downsizing, and cost‐cutting, fewer executives believe that the organisations that they start their careers with will be the organisation that they retire from. Executives who changed jobs in 1987 through five worldwide executive search firms reported their expectations about job change (Worldwide Executive Mobility, 1988). Of the less senior executives, about three‐fourths expected to change companies again within the next ten years. Salary was one potential outcome for these managers. The median raise associated with a job change was about thirty per cent. Advancement was another possible outcome. Top executives had typically held five different jobs and had worked for three different companies in the previous fifteen years. Increased job responsibility was also a potential outcome, although for some job changers job responsibility decreased. A third of U.S. executives changed jobs without changing titles but a third of those who changed job titles moved to jobs of a lower rank. Forty‐three per cent of managers outside the U.S. changed jobs without changing job titles and a quarter of the job title changes were to lower rank.

What makes managers choose to continue taking classes and seminars to further their management development? In the past twenty years, motivated and behavioural theory has been applied to the career decision‐making process in management development. Two approaches, expectancy theory and, to a lesser extent, justification processes have been investigated. The major difference between the two approaches is that expectancy theory suggests that managers are primarily forward‐looking in their careers and management development, whereas justification takes the position that managers attempt to make present career behaviours consistent with past career actions.

Makes recommendations, based on a 1991 study of Hong Kong Executive MBA students, for management education and development programmes for the development of Hong Kong managers, in anticipation of the changes that will occur when control of Hong Kong is transferred from Britain to mainland China in 1997. Finds that Hong Kong managers expect changes in many parts of their lives – political, social, personal property rights and moral beliefs. Therefore, recommends that management development prepare Hong Kong managers to meet this multitude of changes.

One of the most important things for managers to realise is that there may be patterns to their behaviour after management development. A US survey of executive MBA students demonstrated two different patterns regarding further management development. Sometimes the managers′ behaviours appear to be forward looking and weighing alternatives about future outcomes. At other times, their behaviours seem to be backward looking and in justification of past behaviour.

The progress of women in academe is addressed, as well as their participation in the workforce generally, and management positions in particular. Women themselves may be affected by society′s stereotypes of themselves and the value of their work, and the culture in organizations and society has been working against women as much as it has been working for them.

This article introduces the contributions made by a leading management scholar (Lou Pondy) and discusses ways he responded as a mentor to the questionings of his many students.